


A Thread

by Snowflake_Hero



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 15:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17062205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowflake_Hero/pseuds/Snowflake_Hero
Summary: There is something beautiful and simple about it, Ash thinks.





	A Thread

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! This is for the Banana Fish Secret Exchange in Twitter. 
> 
> I’m your match I hope you liked it, I know you said a little, not too much NSFW would be fine, but the thing is… I can’t picture myself anything in the slightest NSFW between these two, so I have to apologize in advance, everything es fluffy, and kinda angsty, and… ORZ
> 
> Thank you very much for reading it. :D

There is something beautiful and simple about it, Ash thinks.

  

It’s not in the way he moves, or about any unnatural beauty.

 

Eiji is, in every aspect of the word a garden variety kid, sometimes kind of vulgar, even stupid at times. Ash can hear Eiji’s diatribe in his head. Screaming and grumbling shamelessly, without any fear or respect towards him.

 

The Eiji in his head, is nowhere like the Eiji that sits three feet away across the room, in the luxurious chair that Mr. Winston's son has bought.

 

He’s a frail child, huddled in a corner of the chair. With a needle in his right hand and an extended thread, entangled between the fingers of his left hand. 

And the thread is sinking down by the edge of the chair.

 

The Eiji that is in front of him maintains a grimace of concentration. A losing shape in which his fingers twist when the thread dyes them red. Ash raises his eyes, there is a persistent itch on the back of his neck.

 

Ash wants to raise his hand and touch Eiji.

 

Just to make sure it's not an illusion...

 

The mere idea would kill him.

 

So, Ash stays away.

 

Ash clings on to the faded letters of the NYTimes.

 

Yet so, Eiji moves again, eyebrows knitted together. And Ash attention moves all again to the sweet way in which Eiji frowns at his work. The scarce fourteen years that Eiji appears, are accentuated by the childish grimace he makes when he pouts.

 But Ash knows better.

 

In the few moments when Eiji takes the baton. In which he draws them both in a complicated dance, in which they rotate and expand, to the point where Ash feels like his soul has been mixed and exchanged.

 

In those moments, in which he believes that living without that feeling of warmth filling each nook, extending through each crack in a soothing balm, at times like these, with Eiji three feet away, in those times he cannot do more than observe.

 

Ash's heart hurts until it's almost difficult for him to breathe.

 

A growl that echoes in the room, and a needle of those that are thicker than his middle finger hits the ground. Ash head flickers, he’s not used to let his guard down.

 

He isn’t used to be in love.

 

Eiji picks up the silver needle, and continues with his work.

 

Ash is about to go back to his journal, he's stuck in the middle of an article, it's nothing more than the usual journalist babble, but the letters have become fuzzy, dark and sharp. 

 

So, he leaves the Times aside and jumps to Eiji's side on the couch.

 

It’s the distance of three feet reduced to a few centimeters.

 

"Now you're in the business of being a grandmother, Eiji?" Ash asks, reaching out to get the remote control. Dino Golzine disappeared, says the anchor. And Ash changes the channel. It doesn't matter to him. 

 

Eiji, as he rarely uses to do, ignores him, but even so, he leans on his side and steals every ounce of warm he can from his shoulder to his knee.

 

Ash doesn't feel the cold that grows.

 

It's flowing water, it's warm, all because Eiji is here.

 

The yarn that slides through the corners of the house, scattered in red. Growing up and sinking into the cracks between the wood, knitting them both in tangled knots. Why do I think this much about it, Ash asks himself; he isn't a romantic after all.

 

Eiji bites his upper lip and points at Ash with the corner of the needle that doesn't have a plastic cap, sharp and old. Ash assumes that it is so that the old women do not end up with another finger in the middle of the hand if they neglected while caring for their eight cats.

 

"It's a scarf, and it's almost complete" Eiji says.  

 

“That maremagnum of thread, is it a scarf?” Ash asks.

 

“What is a... Yes! Yes, it is!” Eiji entangles the thread on one finger and rotates it around the needle, then one, two, three, four... If he doesn’t rush it, he won’t be able to finish it on time.

 

Then the room filled in a comfortable silence.

 

Ash never dreamed of this.  And to this day he believes he doesn’t deserve it, this ray of sun and light deeply entangled, tied with force.

 

The warm of a person who never would let him fall.

 

"But..." He says after a little while, "For who?"

 

"Cannot I use it?" Eiji adds skipping to a knot, to create a figure, and to a third to form a pattern. Scars on the fabric, one for each of them... The people he knows, the people he loves... Shorter...

 

"You don't like red" Ash says, stealing a sip from Eiji's forgotten Budweiser.

 

It’s warm.

 

"Chinatown must be very cold at this time". Ash murmurs, stretching, leaving the empty can on the floor with a lot of effort. Even so, his voice manages to sound carefree.

 

"I don't know", Eiji struggles "Sing received his yesterday".

 

"Did you give that brat a present?!"

 

Eiji arches an eyebrow.

 

And it must be that candle they bought last week. Ash thinks, the smell is making a dent in his brain, that dude is just a boy in Chinatown, a little boy who likes Eiji, a little boy who idolizes him...

 

"Yes, Sing brought us dinner the last time". Eiji says.

 

"And you paid him by making him some gloves and a hat", Ash says. Stretching his feet on the coffee table, the NYTimes is now scrambled under his feet, and the face of the missing Dino grimaces, for some reason everything fits.

 

The scarf, or what was initially a faint line between Eiji's fingers and a swirl of thread lying in their living room, is now almost elegant. “Is that also for...?” Ash says after a while.

 

"And why do you care?" Eiji answers.

 

"Can’t I receive a gift at Christmas, Eiji?" The question sounds playful, but both of them knew it better, something flimsy moves in the green of Ash's eyes. And Eiji is unable to tease him when he looks like that.

 

So young.

 

So fragile.

 

“What are you—?”

 

Eiji tangles his arms tightly on Ash's shoulders. Musky Eiji’s smell, stings in his nose. Something like summer, music, and life itself, in such a simple person, so many things that Ash doesn’t have move all along.

 

"That was..."

 

"What?" 

 

"A present". Ash eyes open almost comically.

 

"That's all?" Ash mutters, making sure that Eiji doesn't move away. Eiji let’s scape a soft sigh against he’s ear.

 

“You can manage with that”.  

 

In Eiji's arms, Ash can't stop himself for thinking how everything was right. 

 

And if not, all only could get better.


End file.
